Pastoral property rights in Central Asia

Résumés

This paper examines the roles of the state, international organisations and the public in pastoral land reform in the Central Asian republics and Mongolia. In recent years new legislation has been passed in most of these countries, often driven by environmental concerns. In the development of these laws, international organisations tend to promote common property regimes, whilst governments usually emphasise individual security of tenure, each using environmental arguments taken from quite different bodies of theory. With the exception of Mongolia, pressure for reform from users themselves has been weak and focussed more on social and economic issues than on environmental problems. Across the region informal grazing practices facilitate the matching of stocking pressure to forage resources; legal frameworks which build on these are most likely to lead to sustainable pasture management.

Plan

The convergence of ideas and interests in the development of property rights legislation

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan: donor-driven experiments in CPRM

Mongolian debates: pasture reform as key political issue

Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – nationally-led processes and state control

Actors: international organisations, governments and pasture users

An environmental discourse?

Conclusion

Aperçu du texte

Central Asia is overwhelmingly dominated by vast rangelands, of which those classified as usable for grazing cover over 60% of its total area. Governance of this vast resource is an issue of fundamental importance for the rural population, the majority of whom raise livestock either as part of agro-pastoral systems or, in arid regions, as the only viable agricultural activity. Formal property rights systems on pastureland introduced since the collapse of the Soviet system include state management, common property, leasing and private ownership regimes (table 1) [Robinson et al. 2012]. We seek here to trace the ideas and interests which have influenced the choice of tenure regime by governments, international development organizations (IDOs) and users themselves. In particular we examine whether an environmental discourse has been paramount to reform, or whether other agendas, such as vested interests or social justice, might have been more important.